Crosscutting Race, Class, and Gender Group Membership, Group Identification, and Political Attitudes (Pluralism, Intergroup Relations, Group Consciousness).

Abstract

Every person in the United States belongs to a combination of dominant or subordinate race, social class, and gender groups. Two broad theoretical perspectives address the effect multiple group memberships have on group identification and political attitudes. The pluralist approach suggests that the differing and often conflicting interests between group memberships prevent the formation of strong emotional group bonds or extreme political attitudes among members. Multiple group memberships, in essence, prevent the polarization of any one social cleavage. The interest-group theory suggests that subordinate group memberships are much more salient to each individual than dominant memberships, at least in cleavages marked by intergroup conflict. Consequently, crosscutting group cleavages tend not to divide subordinate groups, making emotional group bonds and political preferences stronger and more consensual within subordinate groups. These two viewpoints are explored by examining the emotional bonds and political attitudes of blacks and whites, women and men, and the poor, working, middle, and upper-middle classes, using national survey data from 1975. Overall, blacks and the poor have the strongest levels of group identification, bonds which do not vary when crosscutting groups are analyzed. As class position rises, class bonds get weaker while race and gender bonds increase in importance. In every case, emotional bonds to subordinate memberships are stronger than bonds to dominant groups. Similarly, the strong affirmative political attitudes of blacks and the poor do not vary by crosscutting memberships, nor by differences in feelings toward those memberships. Among the remaining groups, affirmative attitudes are strongest among people with at least one subordinate membership. In summary, an interest-group rather than pluralist interpretation is suggested.